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A Lifetime of Dedicated Service

Sheriff Susan Lewellyn Pamerleau, Major General (Ret.)

Volume 15 | Number 1 | September 2013

By Tamara Linse

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University of Wyoming alum Susan Pamerleau has accomplished
more than most—the rank of major general in the U.S. Air Force, military adviser
to NATO, the first woman to command the Air Force ROTC and the Air Force
Personnel Center, and sheriff of the 19th most populous county in the U.S. But it's her service that she's most proud of.

“I’m passionate about service to my community, being able to
make an impact,” says Pamerleau. “Every day I come to work, I know I can do
something good for this community.”

It’s no wonder. Pamerleau grew up in a loving family, and
her father is a minister. She was immersed in an atmosphere of service. Her realization
soon after she joined the Air Force in 1968 that she was part of something much
larger prompted her lifetime dedication to the service of others.

From 1988 to 2000, Pamerleau served on Air Force bases
across the country and around the world in high-level positions in personnel,
resource allocation and support, including on the international military staff
at NATO headquarters in Brussels.

During this time, she served as commander of the Air Force
Personnel Center in Washington, D.C., overseeing 520,000 military and civilian
personnel worldwide. She was the first woman commander of Air Force ROTC,
responsible for more than 1,200 officer, enlisted and civilian personnel
educating approximately 12,000 Air Force ROTC cadets at more than 900 colleges
and universities.

During the course of her career, Pamerleau earned the Distinguished
Service Medal, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the
Meritorious Service Medal with Two Oak Leaf Clusters, and the Small Arms Expert
Marksmanship Ribbon, among others.

She also earned—in addition to her bachelor’s in sociology
from the University of Wyoming—an MPA from Golden Gate University and has
attended the Wharton School, the JFK School of Government at Harvard, and the
Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern. She received an honorary
doctorate from Phillips University and is an Outstanding Alumna from the UW
College of Arts and Sciences.

After 32 years in the Air Force, Pamerleau retired but she
continued to serve the needs of military families as senior vice president of the
United Services Automobile Association, which provides financial services for
military families. She retired in 2007, only to be asked to run for public
office just three years later in her hometown of San Antonio, Texas.

Her first foray into politics against a 12-year incumbent
was a close race, missing by just a few points. Just two years later, she ran a
vigorous campaign against a seasoned incumbent, and is now sheriff of Bexar
County, Texas (pronounced bear). Bexar
County includes San Antonio, the seventh largest city in the U.S., and 25 other
cities and municipalities. Pamerleau oversees a $105 million budget and 1,800
employees.

“You’ve got to be a hands-on leader,” Pamerleau says. “In
this kind of an organization, it starts by setting the direction, setting the
vision.”

However, Pamerleau overcame challenges throughout her
career.

First is her groundbreaking service as a woman in the
military. In 1967, Public Law 90-130 changed the nature of the armed forces by
allowing more women to join. Before that, U.S. law had limited the number of
women in the military to 2 percent and the highest rank for a woman to that of
lieutenant colonel. Consequently, the military began actively recruiting women.

In November of that year, a recruiter made the rounds of UW sorority
houses to talk about opportunities in the Air Force, and Pamerleau and three of
her sorority sisters decided to join. Of the four, Pamerleau was the only one
to graduate from officer training school. “The opportunities for women were
very limited when I went in, but I didn’t have a clue about that kind of
thing,” says Pamerleau.

There was some precedent for military service in Pamerleau’s
family, but not a lot—her uncles has served in the military in World War II,
and her father’s twin brother had been a German POW.

Second, Pamerleau’s brother Michael was diagnosed with
bipolar disorder in the 1960s, and he died tragically when he was struck by a
car on the street.

Third, in the 1970s Pamerleau survived seven years of abuse
and domestic violence at the hands of her husband. He committed suicide on the
day she left him. “I would have been dead at the age of 32,” says Pamerleau.

Throughout her long and distinguished career across the
world, she’s maintained her Wyoming connection.

While
serving at NATO headquarters in Belgium, she and a young intern were sitting at
a sidewalk café. She told the intern, “The next honest person who walks by, we’ll
ask him to take a picture.” Coincidently, that next person was wearing a
Wyoming sweater and turned out to be David Nicholas, a lawyer from Laramie who
served as Department of Defense’s adviser to the U.S. mission to NATO.

“So,
for the next 3 1/2 years,” Susan says, “we worked in different parts of NATO
but we saw each other often, and we jokingly referred to ourselves as 67
percent of the Wyoming contingent in NATO.”

And because
service is so important to Pamerleau, she continues to serve Wyoming and its
university in other ways, including as a member of the UW Foundation Board. Not
only that, she has taken the unprecedented step of creating a bequest that will
support scholarships for all UW Air Force ROTC students in good standing. That’s
approximately 50 students per year, but as many as 100. Air Force
ROTC cultivates academic and leadership excellence in young people, she says.

“What a great way to support my school—my alma mater—and
also ROTC, which is a very important program,” Pamerleau says. “What a great
way of leaving a legacy to the future—of Wyoming, of the University of Wyoming,
of the United States Air Force, and of our nation.”